Today I attended a Mexican-American wedding at the local Catholic church in Shawnee. The ceremony was in Spanish, but what I gathered is that the couple was married, as witnessed by the congregation, and sanctified by God.
There was some standing up, there was some group-talk in Spanish, and there was some sitting down.
El padre hijo y el Espíritu Santo.
The wedding reception started immediately after, but I took an opportunity to escape my suit and came back at 8pm. By then the party was in full force, with much dancing and intermittent screeching yells from men in cowboy hats.
Over this last week, I’ve been thinking about writing a blog post about how we’re all basically the same. I wasn’t going to include that “we’re all the same under the skin” crap, but mention how the African-American guy and his friends downstairs are more like me than they are different: We’re all men and we’re all Americans. We love our babies and still get a little giggly when our woman is around. We complain about our cell phone companies and everyone has a psycho billing story to tell. You might have missed out on the pleasure, but we’ve all spent at least one night in jail.
Here are some observations from the party:
(1) Mexican-Americans love to wear Aéropostale t-shirts.
(2) Mexican-American boys at a large gathering end up running up and down the dance floor. They will also locate paper and fashion them into planes and throw them all night long.
(3) Little Mexican-American girls look so cute dancing in their finest dresses.
(3) Mexican-American babies love balloons.
(4) Mexican-Americans smile at a party.
(5) Mexican-American guys love boots. If your boots have really long toes on them, then you look cooler when you dance.
I don’t know about the shirts and the boots, but you can remove the Mexican- prefix on those names and I bet it applies to every family party you’ve ever attended.
Holy crap, the food was good. I don’t know exactly how one would go about roasting a whole pig, but the result is good pig. Get yourself some tortillas and rice and some of that wild salsa they made and you have a plate full of tasty, Mexican-American pig goodness.
We keep hearing from certain groups that “this isn’t the America I remember growing up in!”
No American, upon achieving middle age, was ever living in the America in which he grew up.
Every change in this country has ended up being for the better. Sometimes it just takes a while to see the results.
You can’t tell me that the people in that reception hall don’t love this country.
You can’t tell me that if this country was attacked, God forbid, that they wouldn’t fight to defend it.
I saw a little boy, of about 5 years, dressed in dark blue denim jeans, with a light blue, wide-collar shirt, and a denim vest, and little cowboy boots. His denim vest had some sort of cool, Mexican design embroidered on it with white thread.
On the little boy’s head was a Spider-Man cap.
That’s America, baby. Bring what you got and get some of what you like.
Leave a Reply